Tuesday 8 March 2011 09.59 EST
First published on Tuesday 8 March 2011 09.59 EST

A brave new frontier in movie distribution? Or yet another way for studios to part punters from their money? Warner Bros and Facebook have announced a joint initiative, whereby movie fans will be able to rent films through the social network site.

The pilot for the plan is The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's 2008 Batman blockbuster – currently No 7 on the list of all-time box-office grossers, and holder of several sales records for DVD and Blu-Ray. The movie's Facebook page has already received more than 3.9m "likes". Consumers will be given a 48-hour window to watch the film. The cost? A mere 30 Facebook credits, or $3.

One catch: the service is only available in "certain regions", which doesn't include the UK.

Thomas Gewecke, president of digital distribution at Warner Bros, said: "Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people. Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts."

This follows Warner Bros' recent move to place "iOS special editions" of The Dark Knight and another Nolan movie, Inception, in the AppStore, for streaming or downloading to iPad and iPhone.